"The Blue Book says we've got to go out and it doesn't say a damn thing about having to come back." --Captain Patrick Etheridge, USLSS

A compilation of U.S. Life-Saving Service reports, newspaper articles, publications and more related to shipwrecks of the N.C. coast. Does not include ships that were hauled off or otherwise saved.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Schooner Florence Randall ~ 16 August 1899

Annual Report of the Operations of the United States Life-Saving Services for the fiscal year ending June 30 1900:

Stranded at 5.30 p.m. 2 miles S. of station during a furious storm. Life savers from Cape Hatteras and Creeds Hill stations came to the assistance of the Big Kinnakeet crew. They assembled on the beach abreast the wreck with the beach apparatus and soon had a shot line on board. After setting up the gear, the whole crew of 9 men, together with the captain’s wife, were safely landed in the breeches buoy. When the surfmen had cut the hawser and secured the apparatus, they took the shipwrecked crew to station, furnished them with dry clothing from the stores of the Women’s National Relief Association, and succored them until the 21st, when they received transportation to Norfolk. The schooner became a total loss. (See letter of acknowledgment.)

Florence Randall

BIG KINNAKEET, NORTH CAROLINA, August 21, 1899

SIR: I hereby certify on honor that my wife and myself and crew of 8 men were rescued from the stranded wreck of the American schooner Florence Randall on 16th day of August, 1899 by the crew of the Big Kinnakeet Life-Saving Station, and that we were cared for at the station to the best of their ability. C.A. CAVILEER, Master of Schooner Florence Randall

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GREATOAKSGROW@GMAIL.COM

Judi Heit is a history buff who has been researching shipwrecks off the North Carolina coast since 2010, when Hammond Innes book "Wreck of the Mary Deare" captured her imagination. The Heits live in Oriental, NC ... a fishing village that takes its name from the Steamer Oriental, wrecked off their coast in May 1862.

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